


Cherry Blossoms

by kethni



Category: Veep
Genre: AU, Exes, F/M, Post-Season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 01:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5766112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kethni/pseuds/kethni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘This is ridiculous,’ Sue said. ‘We are both strong, intelligent, and ambitious women. We shouldn’t be at war over something as petty as a man. Let alone a man that neither of us has.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherry Blossoms

**Author's Note:**

> AU in which Selina lost the election

 

Cherry Blossoms. She frowned slightly. They were pretty, but untidy. At this time of year, they were everywhere. They fell from the trees in showers of pink petals, coating the sidewalks, and clogging up the gutters. It was typical of the place. Something that looked so… romantic but served only to cause endless practical problems.

She adjusted her bag as she stepped around a gaggle of tourists blundering around with a map. A _map_ , when everyone had smartphones. Even her mother had an iPhone, and she used it ruthlessly to keep her brood in line.

Her own phone chimed discreetly. She glanced at it, and increased her speed. She was only moments from the restaurant, but her mother had no more patience for that than anything else. She wouldn’t care about the traffic clogging up the entirely city.

She wished that it were another restaurant. He had brought her there more than once. That was obviously why he had been on her mind, no other reason.

***

‘Why are there cents stuck to the floor?’ her mother asked as they sat down.

‘Part of the aesthetic.’

Her mother sniffed. ‘When you lost your position I hoped you would have more time for your family.’

‘I did not lose my position.’ She picked up her menu. ‘I had already been offered my current position before the election. At no point was I unemployed.’ She looked away as her mother was replying. Something apparently random had fired some synapses. The call of something familiar but unidentified. Not a scent, not a sight… a sound. A snorted breath. Not loud. She shouldn’t have heard it. Wouldn’t have heard it except that on some level she was listening for it. Was always listening for it.

There, a few tables away. He was taking a seat… no. He was holding out a chair for a woman. A young woman. A _very_ young woman.

Sue narrowed her eyes.

The waitress put their drinks down with a clatter.

‘Mason jars,’ Sue’s mother said. ‘Are you out of glasses? Will our food be served in buckets?’

‘It’s part of our theme,’ the waitress said with forced brightness. ‘Good hearty Southern food and drink.’ She shifted. ‘I can get you a glass if you’d rather.’

Sue caught her eye and nodded.

‘Okay then!’ the waitress said, and fled.

***

Sue took a bite of her crispy calamari BLT and allowed herself to glance over at his table. Their table. He and the _embryo_ didn’t appear to have noticed her. The little girl was talking and he was listening silently. Well, Sue had to admit he had something of a talent for it. She wasn’t sure how to take the fact that the girl was mixed race. She _strongly_ disliked the idea that he, that anyone, had been attracted to her due to some kink about the colour of her skin.

Also, the girl was far too young for him. Ridiculously young. It was insulting. Didn’t he realise that his behaviour would continue to reflect on her?

‘I raised you better than that,’ her mother said.

Sue tilted her head. ‘Excuse me?’

Her mother sniffed. ‘Staring at that poor girl. She can’t be blamed for her father being white.’

Sue frowned. ‘He is not her father.’

‘Oh, I’m supposed to believe you know everyone in the city.’

‘I know him,’ Sue said, sipping her wine. ‘Kent Davison doesn’t have any children.’

***

Her mother complained continuously throughout the meal. That was expected. Sarah Wilson had never eaten a restaurant meal, watched a movie, or listened to a piece of music that she couldn’t find some major flaw with. Sue was doing her best to concentrate on her food, which she found excellent, despite the restaurant’s rather desperate attempts to appear bleeding edge.

Nonetheless, she found herself drawn, from time to time, to the other table. She hadn’t seen Kent since she’d left Selina’s employ. It wasn’t that she was avoiding Kent in particular. Oh, she’d seen Gary around, and had spoken to Amy of course. But she had no reason to avoid Kent. They had been broken up now considerably longer than the entirely of their so-called relationship. She barely remembered it. What he was doing and who he was dating were certainly nothing to her.

The embryo got up and went to the ladies’ room. After a moment, Sue followed her. She was taller than Sue had expected and was wearing flat pumps. They were cheap, like her deep plum polyester trouser suit. Sue shuddered. He was dating an _intern_ , or similar. She thought he had more self-respect. He’d be driving a Ferrari next.

***

Sue locked the cubicle door. A polyester suit and cheap shoes. She shook her head. It was never enough to have intelligence and initiative, you had to look the part as well.

A genuinely horrible thought occurred to her. What if she was one of the hordes with ambition and no intelligence? Sue had met no small amount of men and women both who thought that sex and smiles, or daddy’s money and mommy’s connections, were the same as ability.

‘Excuse me.’ It was a calm, precise voice without simpering or weakness.

Good.

‘Yes?’ Sue asked.

‘This cubicle has no paper. Would you perhaps oblige me?’

Sue took what she needed and held the roll in the gap under the wall.

The hand that took the toilet roll had long slim fingers with short, unvarnished nails. There was absolutely no reason why that should make Sue feel better. Yet it did.

‘Thank you,’ the girl said.

***

Sue was washing her hands when the embryo emerged from her cubicle. She’d be beautiful in a few years, when her baby fat vanished, and her cheekbones sharpened. Now she was merely quite pretty, even with minimal makeup. Hazel eyes. Full lips. Blondish hair. Her figure was about fifty years out of fashion and she had a tiny little tummy. More baby fat, Sue supposed.

The girl was watching her in the mirror.

‘I’ve never been checked out in a ladies’ room before,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t,’ Sue said.

She smiled widely, revealing dimples. ‘That’s a shame.’  

Sue blinked. For a moment she was entirely lost for a reply. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Not really.’

Sue nodded at the hand drier. ‘You’re blocking my way.’

The girl cocked her head. ‘I know.’ She stepped aside and began washing her hands.

Sue shook her hands. This had been a significant error of judgement. The girl was going to sit down at the table with Kent and… Sue shook her head. The girl was hardly about to sit down and tell her lover that she had flirted with a random woman in the ladies’ room. No. But she might say _something_ and then he would glance across, see Sue, and get entirely the wrong impression. Because she didn’t care who he was dating. He held no interest for her and hadn’t in a long time. It was simply that Sue didn’t wish to be misunderstood. That was all.

The girl was shaking her hands. Waiting for the drier. Sue took a step back. Her stiletto heel caught on one of the cents in the floor. Her balance faltered. She felt her ankle giving way and, as she fell, heard the distressing sound of shredding fabric.          

‘Was that your dress?’

Given the sudden sensation of impromptu air conditioning, Sue was forced to accede that it was. She was holding the back of her dress. It has sheared completely in two.

‘Hmm,’ said the girl. ‘It was pretty.’ She took off her jacket and handed it to Sue. ‘Beauty is ephemeral.’

‘Clothing isn’t supposed to be.’

The girl was typing into her phone. ‘Are you injured?’

‘My pride and my fashion sense.’ Sue pulled on the jacket. It was slightly tight and had a faint smell of talcum powder.

‘I have a set of clean clothes for yoga in my bag,’ she said. ‘Don’t move.’

‘Thank you.’

She tucked the phone away. ‘I’m Davina.’

‘Sue. I would shake your hand but then my dress would fall off.’

Davina nodded. ‘I’ve had dreams like that.’

‘This feels more like a nightmare.’

There was a cursory tap at the door. A fraction of a second before the door opened she had a hideous premonition of what was about to happen.

Kent was holding the bag out. ‘Here it…’ He saw Sue. He stopped speaking.

‘I see,’ Davina said, taking the bag and shutting the door practically in his face. ‘Obviously you two are acquainted.’ She turned, pulled out yoga pants and a top, and held them out to Sue. ‘That’s why you were staring at me.’

‘Is that a question?’

‘Evidently not.’ She helped Sue to stand up and accepted her jacket when Sue handed it back. ‘Well, this has been fun.’

‘You’re offended,’ Sue said.

‘No. Yes.’ Davina frowned. ‘Embarrassed.’

‘I’m the one with her clothes in shreds. You have no reason for embarrassment.’

Davina’s nod was coolly brisk. ‘Sure.’

She was gone before Sue could say anything else. But what did you say to the barely legal young woman who had checked you out while she was on a date with your former lover?

It was something off a stretch to imagine Kent becoming involved with someone so… adventurous. Although she could see how a somewhat romantically inexperienced man such as Kent might have been flattered by a sexually confident young woman making a pass at him. That didn’t make his weakness acceptable of course. It was still completely ridiculous.

***

 Her mother nearly choked on her iced tea. ‘What are you wearing? What happened to your dress? Do you know how ridiculous heels look with those _things_?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I asked you a question.’

‘No, she asked me three.’ Sue poured herself a glass of water. ‘I ripped my dress. The young lady who was also in the ladies’ room lent me these.’

Her mother sucked her teeth. ‘You’ll have to pay for their meal.’

‘I will _not_.’

‘Susan, do not raise your voice to me.’

Sue forced down another mouthful of water. ‘I refuse to buy a meal for him, even if his girlfriend did me a favour.’

She knew that she had said too much. Her mother looked over to Kent’s table and then back to Sue.

‘I see.’

Sue allowed herself a small sigh. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘All the times you refuse to tell me if you’re seeing someone, and you’re throwing yourself away on some white man old enough to be your father.’

Sue lifted her chin. ‘He’s not, and we only took each other’s company briefly. We had broken up months before the election.’ She caught the waitress’s eye and gestured her over.

‘Why did he end things?’ her mother asked.

‘It was a mutual decision.’

‘Nonsense.’

The waitress, a look of anxiety under her smile, arrived at the table.

Sue glared at her mother for a moment before looking at the waitress. ‘Please send that table a round of whatever they’re drinking and charge it to me.’

‘I suppose that’s something,’ her mother sniffed as the waitress left. ‘He’s looking over here.’

Sue covered her face with her hands.

‘Don’t be so dramatic.’ Sue’s mother sipped her drink. ‘Were you too old? You’re at that age where things start to droop and sag.’

‘You would be the expert.’

‘That girl is much younger than you. She probably doesn’t need to wear a bra.’

‘That has nothing to do with anything,’ Sue said, crossing her arms. ‘The sex was excellent. He loved my body. However, work was stressful and we drifted apart.’

Her mother snorted. ‘Nonsense. You wouldn’t be so angry or so jealous. You never could share, even as a child.’

It was nonsense. That made her comments no less annoying. The fact Sue saw absolutely nothing like flirtation or physical affection between Kent and Davina made their presence in the restaurant, their existence on the planet, no less annoying.

***

Sue and her mother finished first. Sue was in her lunch hour. A luxury she hadn’t quite grown used to. Five day weeks, ten hour days, holidays, and an entire lack of people screaming down the telephone. It was almost enough to make up for the boring, hum-drum banality of it all. Almost.

On her way back to the office, she nursed a cup of takeout coffee. She suffered from the cold right into summer, particularly at night. Except for the few months she was with Kent. He ran hot. The first time she’d woken up with him she thought he had a fever. When he was awake he respected her space but as soon as he fell asleep, he sprawled. An arm across her waist. A leg thrown across hers. His face pushed into the nape of her neck. She hated it.

That is to say, she should’ve hated it.  She had slept better when he was there. Pressed against her. The scent of his skin lingering on the sheets. He had complained whenever she pressed her cold feet against his warm ones, but he never pulled away. She wasn’t convinced that he had always been asleep when he sprawled out in bed. She suspected that, sometimes, he had known exactly what he was doing.

At work, she changed into a spare dress and sent an assistant to the dry cleaners with Davina’s exercise clothes. They were reasonable quality but worn and repaired more than once. The young girl would certainly want them back. Sue could drop them off with Kent, assuming that he hadn’t moved.

Sue allowed herself a small smile. An underhanded thought had just occurred to her. She texted Amy. Amy kept in touch with everyone. It was practical. Washington’s revolving doors meant that any yesterday’s lobbyist could be tomorrow’s White House staffer.

***

‘Why’re you calling anyway?’ Amy asked, when she had finished complaining about her current clients.

‘I need to return something to Kent,’ Sue said. ‘I want to be sure he hasn’t moved.’

‘Don’t think so,’ Amy said. ‘He’s still that thinktank’s chief policy research director or something. He has a huge team. Lucky fucker seems in his element.’

Sue paused to think. She had meant his home, a lovely brownstone in Georgetown, but work was better. Substantially better. Professional. No personal connotations there.

Things had been better when they were working together. That was counter-intuitive but nevertheless true. When he had been underfoot, irritating the wound, she could concentrate on her injuries. On her disappointment. It had kept her anger hot and her affections cool.

Once they were parted physically as well as emotionally, she thought about him much more and with far less… animosity. Yes. That was a fair descriptor.

She remembered that while visiting the market at Dupont Circle there had been a sudden, unexpected downpour. Kent had pulled off his jacket and held it over her head. By the time they reached the Starbucks, he was utterly sodden. They sat upstairs, by a window, clutching giant mugs of coffee while steam rose from their clothes. On the way back, he ticked her fingers and smiled when she pretended to frown.

She remembered little things, mostly. Stupid things, invariably. Things she had no good reason to think about at all.

***

Sue finished work promptly. She suspected that Kent probably worked late as routine but she hoped to drop the cleaned clothes off with security, or another member of staff. Despite having working with him for months after their breakup she now found herself dreading the thought of spending even a moment in his company.

So, she would try to drop the bag off and leave. Simple. It wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t want to see her either. She might even get home in time to call Tony. He had no ambition and little intelligence, but the sex was reasonably good and his company innocuous. He was easy going to a fault. If she cared for him more it would have been insupportable. His entire rambling, chaotic, and sexually indiscriminate life would have been intolerable. But she didn’t like Tony very much and she cared for him even less. So it was acceptable, barely.

***

Her plan to hand over the bag of clothes and stalk away with her head held high, collapsed in the face of intransigent security guards. They wouldn’t let her do anything without approval from a member of staff. She couldn’t drop off her bag. She couldn’t even leave a note. She had to give her name, have her photograph taken, and then wait for his pleasure.

Humiliation upon humiliation upon humiliation.

Four minutes and thirty-five seconds later, a familiar young woman clomped in front of Sue.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

Sue stood up. ‘I’m only here to –’

But she was already clopping away on her ridiculously impractical wedge shoes.

Sue narrowed her eyes. She walked at a measured, leisurely pace. She would _not_ hurry. Not for her. Certainly not for him.

As she reached the elevator, she resolved to be polite. It was the best response to people who seemed bound and determined to irritate you.

‘It’s Leigh,’ Sue said.

‘Yes, Miss Wilson,’ she said. She always spoke in the same tone, but there was a definite dislike in her eyes.

‘You work for Mr Davison?’

Leigh nodded. ‘Mr Davison has been very kind.’

‘Uh-huh.’ There it was. Sue remembered why she disliked Leigh. She remembered why Leigh disliked her.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Sue said. ‘We are both strong, intelligent, and ambitious women. We shouldn’t be at war over something as petty as a man. Let alone a man that neither of us has.’

Leigh stared at her wide-eyed.

‘Don’t pretend ignorance either,’ Sue said. ‘It’s insulting to both of us.’

Leigh nodded. ‘It’s not very consistent with feminist principles.’

‘No.’

The elevator doors opened. They stepped inside and Leigh swiped her card before pressing the button for the top floor.

Leigh stared down at her feet. ‘So are you here to…’ She trailed off and then shrugged. The shrug was far more eloquent than she was.

‘No,’ Sue said firmly. ‘I’m just here to drop some things off.’

Leigh tapped her toes together. ‘I heard you left politics.’

‘I was never _in_ politics. I just happened to work there. Politics was never my passion.’

Leigh looked up. ‘It’s mine.’

Sue looked at her properly. Leigh was so ridiculously young. Sue knew that Kent… She had _thought_ that Kent would never look at Leigh romantically. Even though Leigh’s crush rankled with Sue, she never thought it was an actual threat. Now she wasn’t so sure.

‘You’ve made some good contacts,’ Sue said. ‘You worked at the White House and handled yourself with grace at the inquiry. Those are all very solid steps.’

Leigh smiled. It was a lightning affair, like a camera shutter.

‘Thank you.’  

***

Leigh briskly tapped on the door before pushing it open. ‘He’s expecting you.’

‘Thank you.’ Sue found herself taking a breath as she walked into the office. The first thing that she saw was, of course, a large photograph of a boat. In certain respects, the man was entirely predictable. The second thing that she noticed was a small table piled with Lego, because apparently thinktanks were more forgiving than the White House of inner children escaping into the corridors.

‘Do you want caramel or hazelnut?’

Sue swivelled on her heel. Kent was in the corner of the room, by a small coffee machine, futzing with bottles of syrup.

‘What?’ she asked.

He gestured at the coffee cup he was holding. ‘Your cappuccino. Caramel or hazelnut?’

Up close and without distraction, she could see that he was wearing his beard clipped close with his cheeks and neck shaved. She wasn’t sure if she considered it an improvement or not.

‘I’m only here to drop this off,’ Sue said, holding out the bag. ‘Please thank Davina for me. I had them dry cleaned.’

He cocked his head. ‘I’ve already made it. Be wasteful to get rid of it now.’

‘If you had simply asked the security guards to let me give the bag then you wouldn’t have made it,’ she complained. ‘Caramel.’ She put the bag down on his desk, between the calculator and the telephone.

Kent added a generous measure of syrup to her coffee and handed it to her. ‘Having come all this way, you’re going to complain about my attempting to be a gracious host?’

‘Don’t attempt to be gracious, Kent. You don’t have the skill set.’

‘Perhaps I can learn by your example.’ He gestured over to the small leather couch. ‘Was that your mother you were with at the restaurant?’

He sat on the couch. Neatly. His legs were pressed together and his hands were in his lap, wrapped around the coffee cup. That wasn’t like him. When he was relaxed, comfortable, he sprawled out. Obviously he was far from relaxed. Good. Why should he get to be relaxed when her hands were shaking?

‘Yes.’ Sue sat down. Not quite as close as she would’ve sat once but closer than acquaintances. Closer than colleagues. Closer than she should. Not as close as she wanted. ‘She has been agitating to go there for months.’

Kent smiled. ‘Did she complain all the way through?’

‘I don’t think there was a single thing that she enjoyed.’

‘Ah.’ Kent took a gulp of his coffee. ‘A success then.’

‘For my mother, yes.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘I didn’t realise that I’d described her to you quite so vividly.’

Kent nodded. ‘You painted quite the picture. Not a lady I would wish to cross.’ He licked his lips. ‘How’re you finding the real world?’

‘I never left the real world.’ It was too sharp. She felt him wince. ‘You look as if life is treating you well. I don’t like what you’ve done with your beard.’

He shrugged slightly. ‘You didn’t like it before.’

‘Of course, I never considered my job as part of my identity. Therefore, when my job changed I wasn’t forced to resort to dating teenagers in order to assuage my ego.’

Rather than the appropriate embarrassment, Kent faced her with an expression of mild confusion. ‘From your tone, I assume I’m meant to be insulted.’

‘But you’re not.’

Kent shrugged. ‘I’m not dating anyone at the moment, let alone one or more teenager. You know that I’m not a natural suitor.’

Sue forced herself to supress a smile. ‘Your courtship techniques lack the simple grace of hitting a woman over the head with a club and dragging her back to your cave.’

He gulped coffee. ‘Alas, I have neither a club nor a cave.’

‘Never mind. No doubt that Leigh is happy to provide for you when you can’t lure a more suitable woman to your home.’

It was unfair, and she regretted it as soon as she spoke. She wasn’t surprised that Kent flushed red.

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about Leigh this way,’ he said sharply. ‘She can’t help… She’s talented and a very hard worker. Defining her by some silly crush is demeaning.’

‘You’re right,’ she said, surprising them both. ‘What about Davina, does she know that you’re not dating?’

Kent stared at her blankly for a moment, and then began laughing.

Sue gripped her mug in her hand. ‘Don’t laugh at me.’

He waved a hand. ‘Apologies. Sincerely.’

Sue straightened her back. ‘You were taking her to lunch.’

‘She was taking me to lunch.’

‘Why would she…’ Sue paused. Of course. _That’s_ why he had been on her mind. ‘Happy birthday.’

‘Thanks.’

Ben called him cold and robotic. Amy called him weird. The effect was to suggest that he was inscrutable. Mystifying. Sue had never struggled to understand him.

‘You’re wondering why I care who you’re dating,’ she said. ‘Why I would care who’s taking you to lunch. I don’t care.’

Kent put his arm along the back of the sofa. Damn it. He wasn’t supposed to relax.

‘You’re a bad liar, Miss Wilson,’ he said.

‘You’re flattering yourself.’

He crossed his legs, putting his foot up on the opposite knee. ‘How’s it flattering to accuse me of sexual impropriety with girls nearly forty years my junior?’

Nothing ever quite made Sue dig in her heels like the knowledge that she was wrong. It was singularly infuriating.

‘Some men consider women as a kind of trophy. Young women in particular.’

A muscle jumped in his jaw. His hand, resting on the sofa, clenched tightly into a fist.

‘Some women treat men like a meal ticket,’ he said. ‘That’s irrelevant. You don’t think men are meal tickets and I certainly don’t think that women are trophies.’

She should apologise. She should agree that of course he was right. She should try to exit the whole horrific situation as gracefully as possible.

‘I don’t know that,’ she said. Her stomach was tightening like a vice as she forced out the words. ‘Perhaps I was a trophy. Perhaps Davina is.’

The colour drained from his face leaving him grey and sickly. He stood up slowly, all vitality leached away.

‘You should go,’ he said.

Sue licked her lips. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she said quietly.

‘Then why say it?’

She looked down at her hands. They were clenched in her lap. She had no memory of moving them. ‘Because you went to lunch with a confident and attractive woman while I was with my mother. Because you’ve moved on. Because you broke up with me.’

The sofa cushions shifted as he sat down again.

‘I went to college with her parents. Honey and Aisha,’ he said. ‘I watched her being born.’ He pulled out his wallet and started looking through it.

‘I have friends from college,’ Sue said. ‘I wouldn’t care to watch any of them give birth.’

Kent grunted as he pulled a snapshot from his wallet and handed it over. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Wait, Honey and Aisha?’

‘Said it was complicated.’

Sue looked at the snapshot. Davina, gap-toothed and smiling. She looked six or seven. Then Sue looked again more closely. ‘ _Oh_.’

‘Yeah.’ He scratched his temple.

‘But they’re her parents?’

Kent nodded. ‘All legal and above board.’

‘You never said.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m sort of like an uncle. It’s not a big deal.’

Sue took another look at the photograph before she handed it back. ‘She has your eyes.’

‘My taste in women too, apparently.’ His tone had softened to a playful gruffness she hadn’t heard in a long time.

Sue felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘She told you.’

Kent smiled slightly. ‘She’s still figuring this stuff out. Not dated a lot.’

‘Does she know who you are?’

‘Oh sure. Honey and Aisha are free spirit types. Trust children to be autonomous individuals and things of that nature.’

Sue rolled her eyes. ‘Goodness.’

Kent frowned and reached out to her. ‘Hold still.’

Sue froze. ‘Is it a bug?’

‘If it was I’d be on the other side of the room.’

‘I thought that was bees and wasps,’ she said.

‘And beetles.’ He drew back his hand. ‘Cherry blossoms.’ He carefully put the petals on the coffee table. ‘Davina is thinking about her future. She’s trying to find a part-time job over the summer.’

Sue patted her hair with her hand. ‘Is she coming to work here?’

Kent lent back against the sofa. ‘You made the right choice getting out when you did.’ He waved a hand towards the coffee table. ‘You see those? We take these bright, ambitious kids right out of college and we throw them right in the gutter. Tread them into the mud knowing there’ll always be more. Dan had a breakdown. Bill’s in prison. Ben had another heart attack. Look what we did to Leigh.’

Sue put her hand on his knee. ‘You keep saying “we” but you didn’t do any of that. Selina and Dan threw Leigh to the dogs.’

‘I didn’t stop them.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘Someone just like me could end up watching Davina getting scapegoated the same damn way.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Sue said. ‘There’s nobody just like you.’

 Kent’s thumb was rubbing the back of her hand.

‘I’m serious,’ he said.

‘So am I.’

Kent let out a breath. ‘So, you’re still mad at me.’

‘Until the day I die,’ she said briskly.

Kent played with her fingers. ‘Ramona says it was probably insecurity.’ He sighed. ‘It would have behoved me to have been more understanding.’

Sue yanked back her hand. ‘Who exactly is Ramona?’

He was trying not to smile. ‘My therapist.’

She slapped his forearm. ‘You made me look foolish.’

‘Hmm, you did that yourself.’

Sue scowled at him but acceded the point. ‘Why are you throwing good money away on a therapist? You don’t need therapy.’

Kent rubbed the spot where she slapped him. ‘Sure I did. Wasn’t I just telling you how horrendously stressful working in politics is?’

Sue crossed her legs. ‘How long has this nonsensical state of affairs been ongoing?’

‘Since just after we parted ways.’

She moved a little closer. ‘We did not “part ways,” Kent,’ she said firmly. ‘You made a unilateral decision to end our relationship. That was absolutely your decision. Don’t attempt to blame me for the misery that you brought on both of us.’

He was quiet for a few moments. Then he tipped up her chin. It was a ludicrously patriarchal gesture. She should have hated it. _Should_ have. 

‘You wouldn’t let me breathe,’ he said. ‘I didn’t deserve to be treated as unfaithful.’

‘I didn’t think you actually…’ Sue trailed off. She couldn’t genuinely say that she had trusted him. She couldn’t say that he had given her reason to mistrust him.

Kent sighed and gently bumped his foot against hers. ‘I don’t know what you thought was going to happen if you weren’t in the room when I talked to my mother,’ he said. ‘Or spent a couple of hours sailing alone.’

Sue looked away. ‘You might have realised that you didn’t need me.’

He took her hand in his. ‘I’d have understood that. You could’ve told me.’

‘No. I couldn’t.’

‘You know that’s not why I ended things,’ Kent said. ‘It wasn’t because I didn’t need you. It wasn’t because I found someone else.’

Sue shifted in her seat. ‘I know that.’

‘You’re seeing someone about it?’

Sue pulled a face. ‘The entire process is deeply irritating.’

Kent nudged her with his shoulder. ‘I know you’re not afraid of a little hard work.’

‘Certainly not.’ She straightened her skirt. ‘Is my gracious host likely to offer me another coffee?’

He glanced at his watch. Sue tried to swallow her disappointment.

‘It’s a little late,’ he said.

‘Of course.’ Sue stood up.

Kent stood quickly. ‘Could your gracious host take you out to dinner instead?’

‘Oh!’

‘Have I misunderstood?’ he asked tentatively.

Sue shook her head. ‘No. But it’s your birthday. I should take you.’

‘I’ll get my jacket,’ he said.

 


End file.
